Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V review: Five to go

Introduction

Do we cancel the show if the star is not available? This one must've crossed some minds over at Sony Ericsson when the Xperia Neo had to be discontinued. But no, they didn't cancel it. The crew was told to take five instead while they skimmed the B-list for a possible substitute.

The Xperia neo V is not an upgrade of the original Neo. It’s actually a downgrade forced by circumstances. The only difference is the camera sensor - down from 8 to 5 megapixels - and the more recent Android version. Sounds so little, doesn't it? That's the price for saving the Neo.

Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V official pictures

The deadly Japan earthquake took lives and brought the local electronics industry to a halt. Sony was affected too and, with a shortage of 8 megapixel camera sensors looming, someone had to take the hit. That someone was the Xperia neo. This is the story told by a company insider, who we have no reason to doubt.

It's the same phone, different camera and the lower price makes sense. And it should be clear by now the V is the Roman numeral for five, not a letter. Could there be a victory sign anywhere in the picture?

Key features

• Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• 3.7" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit LCD touchscreen of FWVGA resolution (480 x 854 pixels) on Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine
• Android OS v2.3.4 Gingerbread
• 1 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset
• 512 MB RAM
• 5 MP autofocus camera, LED flash, geo-tagging, 3D Sweep Panorama
• 720p video @ 30fps, continuous autofocus with continuous autofocus and stereo sound
• Front facing VGA camera, video chat (Google, Skype)
• Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS
• microSD slot (32GB supported, 2GB card included)
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Voice dialing
• Adobe Flash 11 support
• microHDMI port
• Deep Xperia Facebook integration

Main disadvantages

• Forced camera downgrade to 5MP
• Display has poor viewing angles
• The competition has dual-core CPUs, 1080p video
• No smart dialing
• Loudspeaker has below average performance
• Very limited video codec support
• Memory card slot under the battery cover

So, the Xperia Neo lives inside the Neo V. Patched up with band aid and mildly myopic but sill. The potential deal-breakers are identical, so if you had second thoughts about the original, you'll probably pass on this one too.

Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V live pictures

If you meet the Neo for the first time you are welcome to join us as we explore the hardware and build. Let's see if Sony Ericsson play a bad card poorly or make the most out of a situation they never meant to be in.